The Tower of Letters and Blood
by Justice Must Only Be
Summary: Kept as a prisoner in an inescapable tower, he lives a life of neverending pain and horror. When the life lead in terror, forced on him by his sadistic scientist captor, becomes too much to bear, Sora's mind starts splintering under the pressure. In the tower of letters and blood, this is where reality shatters. Full title: Where Reality Shatters The Tower of Letters and Blood"
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer- We do not own Kingdom Hearts.

Author's Note(s)-** Hello everyone! This is Justice333 coming with a new story that's been further developed and experimented with my fellow author, Dawn! This is my first time  
doing a collaboration so I'm pretty excited to see all of your first  
impressions. Have fun reading, and drop some feedback if ya can. :)**

_Hiya! This is Dawn posting this chapter today, and I'm so excited to have it up and the story started! I'm cowriting this with Justice, and we're just getting used to the whole cowriting thing. First project together, and it's a pretty big one. This is a total darkfic, like, completely. With any luck, it'll have plenty of suspense and horror. Credit to Justice for coming up with the idea!_

_And we hope that in future chapters, your heart may skip a beat, and that maybe, a shiver of fear will creep up your spine. We'll do our best to deliver a bone-chilling thriller. If we succeed in darkfic, send us a review and let us know! _

_Enjoy!_

* * *

**(Where Reality Shatters) The Tower of Letters and Blood**

**Prologue: **_**Reality Shatters**_

* * *

When he opens his eyes to a dismal, steel ceiling, it becomes a chore to keep his eyes open, and not close them just to _not see _the painfully familiar sight. It arches upward in a perfect spiral, creating an effect that is usually reserved for the roofs of cathedrals.

He shivers, and pulls up his old cotton sheet in an attempt to shield his body from the numbing, constant cold. Its damp fabric fails to provide the comfort he seeks, and the itchy mattress beneath him doesn't help matters.

He breathes in deeply, and the spiky-haired brunette shifts his head to the side, taking in the barren cellar with mock curiosity. Besides the sad excuse for a bed he lies in, the only other object to decorate the room is located in the (not so) far corner of his small room.

A small, rickity desk stands there, mixed with a wooden chair that's missing one of its legs. The only light in the room stems from the window behind him, which is little more than a rectangular hole in the wall, shedding the dark tresses of the room with moonlight that makes everything shine with a cold, blue light.

A strange sound startles him out of his observation of the familiar surroundings, bouncing against the walls and slamming into his eardrums in ringing echos.

Startled, he jumps out of the bed, wildly shifting from toe to toe with nervous energy. After a few seconds of panicking, he lowers his head, only to startle again at a horrid rumbling sensation that twists his empty stomach into tight knots.

A grimace twists his features in the frigid air while the boy places a hesitant hand on his abdomen and winces at the hunger pains. His fingers twitch and shake before clutching at the dirty white shirt (better known as a rag) covering his too-thin, empty belly.

He forces a smile through the pain before walking up to his desk, and sitting carefully on the three-legged chair that groans ominously and wobbles unsteadily with his weight. Upon further inspection, one can see a pile of messy papers littering the desktop, some scrawled with close-spaced black lettering. The onslaught is parted in the middle by a black feather quill with a worn gold nib, an oval-shaped ink well, and the creaking, blue-painted boards of the desktop beneath the writing supplies.

Sora sits at an angle, his weight pressing into the chair's balanced foundation with a low 'thump' of the wobbling legs. His hand grasps the quill with conviction, his toned fingers prepared to attack as he sorts through the papers, and he removes the lid from the ink well and dips his pen.

He finds one that's only half-covered in messy writing, since his supply of paper isn't endless, and smoothes it out on the desk, then taps the end of his pen on the edge of the ink bottle to flick off the excess ink, since the inkwell won't last forever and he may has well stretch it to last for a long as he can, just like the previously-used paper which he draws a careful line across to divide the old writing from the new.

He frowns, and writes a date in the right corner up by the line, and begins to scribble out small, black inked printing at a fast pace.

_Hey, Kairi. It's me again…_

_I know I haven't written to you in a while, but I've been feeling very… __**weird **__lately._

_I don't know how to describe it… but I feel like something is __**missing**__… I'm finding it hard to believe I ever had a life outside this prison._

_Whatever, how have you been? For me, everything is just a routine. Nothing really happens, just same old, same old…_

_My sleeping patterns have been off… then again, I can never tell how long I've slept because the moon is __**always **__out. I'm not even joking… there is no sun here, just the moon and the night._

_Sometimes I dream about the outside world. About valleys filled with green grass and waterfalls… there are even flowers occasionally…_

_Then I see the sky, full of lively wind and clouds. It's all so… beautiful._

_The sky here isn't like that. It's very dark; you can never see anything…_

_The only light that reaches this place comes from the moon… and that is how it has always been…_

_Someday… I'll be there. I know, I've rambled about that a lot…about leaving this place…_

_It's been so long… I don't really remember what my life was like before this…_

_But… even if it seems __**impossible**__, I still believe that a way out exists. I just haven't found it yet…_

He pauses, and sets the quill, now dry of ink, to the side. With a disgruntled sigh, the boy lifts his paper up, glaring obsessively at the words littered along the paper in neat, straight lines of black letters.

His hands push together, clumping the item into a small wad. It flies through the air behind him, landing next to his poor bed, where it'll stay until later, when he'll pick it up and smooth the creases out to read the crumpled writing. His head slams straight forward into the desk while he bangs the surface angrily. "Ugh, that sounds stupid…"

As the statement leaves his lips, the chill air swirls around him, freezing him to the core. Sora coughs out a breath that clouds in the abruptly cold air, before turning to glance at the window. Leaves are rustling past the opening outside, running with the wind currents that sends papers flying off the desk as a low 'boom' shakes the room, the furniture rattling with the force.

Sora narrows his eyes, dreading the weather's growing temper tantrum that he knows is coming.

With a large groan fit for any weary teen, he heads back towards his humble sleeping abode. His foot glides past the crumpled up paper, and a frown makes its way onto to his features as he picks up the disgraced parchment warily.

After he mumbles incoherently for several long minutes, his hand works through the hasty folds and creases, attempting to reread the smudged, creased handwriting on the page. The atmosphere continues to chill as rain starts, pelting the floor beneath his window with water droplets that blow in with the icy wind that sends goosebumps rising on his skin.

Sora ignores the new disturbance as his eyes race over the words on the paper. He stops when he reaches the final line of writing.

_Even if it seems __**impossible**__… I still believe that a way out exists. I just haven't found it yet…_

His soul bursts with agony over the lie that he wrote himself only _moments _earlier. His face is a mask of aloofness, and his eyes appear hollow and empty. A false grin slithers over his face while he clutches the paper to his chest tightly. The expression twists into a tired, _bitter _smile that's hard to hold.

The silent seconds of mourning are broken by a flaring shot of pain that pierces into his stomach and brings his arms to wrap around his midsection as he doubles over.

His yelp blasts out into the room, louder than the relentless rain and rumbling thunder. He hisses, holding in another scream and he stares incredulously at the dropped paper in front of him, resting on the grey, faded blanket that covers the lumpy mattress. His arms tighten around his stomach at a fresh wave of hunger pains, and he falls onto his knees by the bed with his head bent down.

He gasps as crimson liquid starts spilling onto the page, and a hand that brushes over his mouth momentarily interrupts the flow of red, and his fingers are coated with blood when he glances down at them. His chin is wet with the liquid trailing from his gasping mouth, wide open and leaking a thick, constant stream of blood as he stares in horror at the page and the drops falling steadily onto the writing that blurs as the ink runs.

The hair on the back of his neck stands up as Sora takes in the puddle with morbid fascination, the blood dripping more slowly off his lips into a splattered pool. The liquid runs off of the edge of his bed, and drips onto the floor, staining the wood just as it stains his worn blanket.

The red fluid continues to drip, slipping down the uneven wooden floorboards to the opposite wall. It creeps sluggishly and unnaturally up the stone wall with shining, wet, red trails, and starts to shift into clearer shapes that form letters on the cold, dark rock.

And Sora can't move, can't _breathe_, can only gasp stutteringly as the blood continues to fall from his lips, cooling and congealing into a grizzly mess on the bed. He grips his stained blanket, lips moving soundlessly as he mouths out the words that seem to be finger-painted on the wall with an invisible hand, and traces them with wide, scared blue eyes.

The blood shimmers eerily in the moonlight, and the moon coats the words with a soft, ethereal glow that seeps into the cracks:

_**I can help you escape…**_

Sora swallows his pooling saliva, and almost chokes at the amount of blood he swallows with it, coppery in taste and thick like mud, and his voice shakes with unrestrained tremors when he finally finds his voice to whisper into the empty room. "K-Kairi? Is that you?"

There is no answer, and if Sora's honest, he didn't expect one, even if he _hoped _to hear a familiar voice respond. Instead, the fluid continues running into the cracks in the stonework, disappearing from view and erasing the words that dance in his head. The boy slumps down against the wall at his back, his form boneless and limp as he blinks in stunned stillness at his bed, the paper sitting there once again white, the blanket unstained and the blood gone.

He licks his lips and tastes copper, then rubs a hand over his chin to _see_, to see if, _if_-

He stares at his hand, at the red that he had wiped off his chin, and feels his jaw flop open as he tastes the blood on his tongue and his lips, and smells the iron that's thick in the air. He looks up at the wall, at the place where the words had been, and he wants to scream because _they're not there_, they're _gone_, and he _doesn't know what __**happened**_. He doesn't know _how _it did, or _if _it really even _did_, and wonders if _maybe _it was just a hallucination.

The words are fresh in his mind with the memory of the red, hand-written letters that were _there_, they were _really there_, but they're _not _anymore. No proof, no _evidence_, and even with the memory it seems unbelievable and _impossible_.

But the taste of his own blood lingers in his mouth, and there's still red on the back of his hand that _didn't _disappear with the rest of it.

It's too _much_, too much to deal with, and too much to understand at _all_. He curls up against the wall, knees against his chest and arms over his head as he cowers and trembles and _screams_.

Thunder crashes overhead, and he jerks violently, his scream cut off as he freezes.

Then he blinks, as lightning follows the thunder and flashes brilliantly, illuminating the room with pure, white light. He presses his back to the wall, fingers scrabbling against the stone with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, and his eyes are wide and flashing in the lightning that bursts into the world with more thunder in an explosion of sound and brightness that reaches every corner of the room.

And Sora _shrieks _in terror.

From wall to wall, the floor is covered in blood.


	2. Chapter 2

**(Where Reality Shatters) The Tower of Letters and Blood**

**Interlude, Roxas**

_"I'm sorry," he says, softly, sincerely. "I'm sorry." His arms tighten, and he shuts his eyes tightly._

_Pale hair, dirty with blood and grease and filth is ruffled by a gentle hand, and the smaller figure sighs, too calm and too nothing. "You always say that."_

_"Maybe because I always mean it," the first one mumbles, face pressed to the blond head._

_The blond chuckles weakly, nothing left in him to make the sound anything more than an uneven huff of breath. "You're sorry," he says, almost dreamily, as chemicals start kicking in and his eyelids start drooping._

_"I'm more sorry than you can believe." Arms tighten even more, in a grip that would have been almost painful, had the boy in his arms been fully conscious._

_"And what does that mean?" he asks disinterestedly, no infliction._

_"That I'm sorry," is mumbled into blond hair, apologetic and sad._

_"But you don't do anything to fix it." There's more expression on his face than there has been for a very long time, as he tilts his head up with wide, beseeching blue eyes. Much more of something in them that (surprisingly) wasn't empty and nothing._

_"I'm sorry," he says again, as though repeating it could make it more true._

_"You're sorry." The blond blinks, eyes going wider for a split second as he stares blindly, and doesn't feel his body slowly go numb with the effect of the drugs._

_Axel nods, the slight movement brushing his cheek against blond spikes of dirty hair._

_"You're sorry," he says slowly, turning the words over in his mouth._

_"But you never, __**ever**__, do anything." There's something close to anger in his words, burning past the cloudy haze of drugs. "You're sorry, but you don't fix it, you don't even __**try**__."_

_But then once again there's the too calm, and too __**empty**__ nothingness as he turns back to the wall, comfortingly blank. And Roxas says, "So what does __**that**__ mean?"_

**Chapter I: Cemetery Hours**

Axel thinks that working the night-shift in The Tower, working the graveyard shift, should probably be worth some sort of hazard pay, and he'll remember to mention it the next time he sees one of the bosses.

Which might be soon, since they keep some pretty _crazy_ hours and usually at least one of them wanders about the halls late at night, probably just to scare all of the unsuspecting night-shift workers out of their skin. And he pretty much only keeps the job because it pays really, _really_ well. Yeah, maybe he's more than just a little corrupt, very eagerly accepting the bimonthly paycheck that's only as generous as it is because it's _payout_ money that keeps everyone quiet about what they do and see in The Tower. (_The Tower_. Capitalized, an entity in and of itself, which freaks Axel out a little because it makes him think about the building being sentinent, which would be the creepiest thing in ever.)

He only stays because of the paycheck, because without it he's sure that he'd never get a wink of sleep from the nightmares he'd get from what he's seen. A double dose of practically _anesthetic_-grade sedatives every night are the only thing that keep him well rested. The pills are unprescribed, and purchased through not-quite legal means. Or, not at all legal means if he considers the legality of the job he works to get the paycheck to pay for the pills. Which he tries _not_ to do, because his job doesn't bother him much yet, but that's mostly because he eliminated almost all of his conscience shortly after his first week working in The Tower.

And, you know, considering legal-ness of his job might make his conscious start growing back or something equally _weird_, which wouldn't be a good thing since Axel likes the big paycheck, and he likes the minimal hours. It's an awesome job if you can numb yourself to what you actually have to do, and Axel did.  
He _likes_ the job, for the most part, mainly the paycheck, because, you know, munnys, and lots of them. His lack of consciousness is good for him. Maybe not so good for the other people in The Tower, but it's good for him, and Axel always put himself first in his life. It's worked great so far, and his outlook of the world consists of "_Axel is always number one, and other people's suffering doesn't matter one bit_".

Just _don't care_, don't _ever_ care, that was his mantra for when the job seemed kind of bleak, and the paycheck was the only good thing. And it was a really _awesome_ good thing, and Xemnas, or Hojo, or whoever-the-hell paid him, really liked to invest a ton of cash into keeping the workers happy and quiet.  
But the night-shift. Man, the night-shift in The Tower was sketchy as _hell_, and most of the time makes Axel's skin crawl for, like, a week after he works just one night.

"Definitely worth hazard pay," he mumbles, fingers twitching over the gun in a holster at his hip. "So, totally, completely worth a _lot_ of hazard pay."

"What's worth hazard pay?"

And _cue_ Axel jumping out of his skin, because of course, he's working the night-shift, and of _course_, one of the creepy bosses is wandering around creepily and silently, sneaking up behind him because he didn't hear any footsteps, which is eerie since the one who spoke is kind of old, hunch-backed, and... shaky. Unsteady.  
Not sneaky with mad-crazy _ninja skills_.

"Mr. Hojo," Axel greets calmly, keeping his freak out contained in his mind, and turns to nod at the scientist.

"Potential specimen," Hojo nods back. (It would set Axel's nerves on edge to be addressed as a "potential specimen", but Hojo talked to _everyone_ like that, all the time, which was actually kind of scary now that Axel thought about it, and _stop thinking. Boss pays big paycheck, he can call you a __**hooker**__ if that's what makes him happy_.)  
The scientist leans closer to Axel, white lab coat shiny with... _something_ smeared on the right shoulder, something that the redhead's pretty sure he does _not_ want know anything more about other than it's _creepy_. Axel leans away, spine curving like he's doing the limbo.

"Hazard pay for what, my boy?" Hojo asks, and squints up through glasses that up his mad-scientist factor by, like, _fifty_.

"For, uh, um." Axel swallows, and makes a conscious effort to not grab the gun to aim at his boss. "Just, uh, for the night-shift workers here. 'Cause- _well_, err."

The scientist nods, and Axel lets out a sigh as his answer seems to satisfy the mad-scientist-who-is-also-his-boss. "Hazard pay," he says thoughtfully. "It is quite hazardous working here in The Tower at night. Dangerous, very, very dangerous." He glances up, eyes bulging behind his glasses. "That's a great idea, dear boy! Your potential as a specimen has gone up considerably!"

"Oh," Axel squeaks. "That's, um, good?"

"Very good, very good," the doctor mumbles, and then skitters to the side before dashing off down the hallway at a full-out sprint that should have broken the old guy's hip or something, but didn't, because the whole place was _messed up._

Axel stares for a minute, and rubs his eyes, then he wonders whether he might have just had a really _trippy_ hallucination, but thinks that it probably happened for real, since not even he could make up something that damn _weird_. "Crazy old freak."

He starts off down the hall like he had been doing before the talk with Doctor Crazy, and his hand is permanently hovering over the holster at his hip, he tense as hell and really, really creeped out. "Wait. Did he say that it was dangerous here at night?" speaking out loud is _so_ not helping the creeped-out-ness, and now Axel's probably eternally scared of The Tower at night and the night-shift, but _hey_, now there's the chance that he'll get some hazard pay, curtsey of himself and his perfect timing for letting the boss-man hear and actually accept it as a possibility.

"Hazard pay." Axel stomps a foot in annoyance. "I better get some freakin' hazard pay for this."

And he continues walking, ready to complete his main part of work which happens to take place inside the Tower itself. Though labeled the "Tower" the building mainly resembled a castle if anything, apart from the small column that shot up fifty feet in the middle of the workplace.

Axel would be a fool to admit that the outside scares him as much as it does, because the inside is even worse.

First, there's the slime. No, not the cartoony green slush found in children's shows. No, this slime tastes of copper and soot, coating the walls of the building with a transparent film that reminds Axel nauseatingly of stomach fluid. If the smell doesn't knock you out, the visual will.

It's like the wall is _alive_, crawling with disturbing unknown substances. Axel recalls touching the wall once only to pull back as the foreign substance practically froze his hand off. Whatever the hell it is, Axel stays away from it, which isn't the easiest thing to do when his job requires him to travel up the spiraling staircase right next to the nuisance.

This leads him to the second unnerving fact about his job, namely, his shift. The "Graveyard" shift, the most undesirable time slot, laced with a horrible reputation and track record of "accidents". Axel's the tenth person hired for his current position, the others before him having disappeared in random acts ranging from fatal car accidents to suicides. Sometimes, Axel can't even imagine why or how he works at the Tower. Too many unpleasant sensations and bad memories to boot; after all, people were killed daily at his workplace.

_You're being irrational_, a voice in his head interrupts. True, he has never seen evidence of such heinous crimes that are whispered back and forth in the locker room like highschool gossip, but that doesn't change the signs being pushed towards him. He can feel the patients' terror, hear their screams, and occasionally there are times where he walks by random halls only to turn away so that he can ignore the splotches of blood littering the pavement and splattering the walls.

Yes, people died here, of that he was certain. Axel continues contemplating the subject as his feet shuffle in an odd path against cold, brutal stone. His breathing remains steady, mainly a result of practice and familiarity. He could walk up the steps backwards with a blindfold and make it in one piece (it doesn't take the fear away though).

The scenery blends into a new world the higher he gets; the walls become more dirty, brown with mold. The steps creak more, crumbling lightly at the edges as if it were coated in dust. He groans as the air gets colder, biting into his thin black coat with a fetish for his chest. After a few more seconds he reaches a wooden door, cracked in the corners with a bronze doorknob.

"Here we go," he whispers, mentally preparing himself for an exchange so monotonous in its repetition that it _almost_ distracts him from the truth of his work.

Almost as in... it doesn't change a damn _thing_.

He takes a breath, and quits stalling, opening the door, a nonchalant expression pasted on his face. "Hey, you! Nap time's over."

Axel can safely claim that he dreads this aspect of his job, despite the relative simplicity of the task. His objective had always been to survey his assigned "patient" and escort them to the briefing room where he would perform a few other minor jobs before he was released and ordered to deliver the next specimen (as Hojo refers to them). However, the person in front of him was a _special_ case.

The fourteen-year-old brunette with startling sea-blue eyes was a part of a particular group, set up in complex trials and various experiments. Axel had to monitor the boy's weight, eating habits (not that there was much food to begin with), heart beat, blood pressure, and other health related stuff (and he wasn't even a qualified doctor, imagine that). Of course, this was only stuff he had to do upon request, most days he simply walked the boy to the other side of the Tower.

However... Axel could sense a change rolling through the disquieting air. He didn't know what or when, but_ something_ was going to give.

For Axel, the first sign of that was this very moment, staring into the frantic eyes of a young boy whose skin was as white as a sheet. His jaw was open wide, hands shaking in tight coils at his side, his clothes ripped beyond repair.

"Sora?" Axel says almost nervously, his eyes narrowed at the sight in front of him.

Sora's hands lift from his tattered rags to his mouth, covering his trembling lips. "Blood..."

"What?" Axel wants to _forget_ this encounter, it brings back many painful memories. Memories of another, very similar boy who had lived in this very same pitiful room. His first assignment.

Axel shakes the images away. "Look, you can spazz out all you want on the way, but we _have to go_."

Sora mutters at his hands, as if he hadn't heard. "Blood, so much blood. But now... it's all gone."

"Yeah." Axel hides his grimace and takes out a pair of silver handcuffs that were previously ensnared inside his back pocket. "Turn around."

The routine soon seeps back into Sora, muscle memory allowing him to move his frail body. Axel frowns while trapping the boys wrists. _What the hell happened to him? Has he finally lost it?_

Axel keeps the questions to himself, quelling his curiosity. He isn't paid to ask questions, and, frankly, he doesn't care enough to bother asking. Well, it's what he tells himself so that he can sleep somewhat peacefully at night.

Axel got rid of his grief long ago, back when they separated him from their first patient. There isn't any left to make him feel _anything_ as he pulls the boy down the stairs.

"C'mon," Axel says, and pulls on the chain connecting the handcuffs, drags Sora along behind him, the boy still dazed and compliant.

They rush down the steep, spiralling staircase, and through the echoing eerie halls to a familiar room. Axel pauses at the door, and fumbles with his keys while keeping a hand on the chain connecting the cuffs, since it wouldn't do to let a prisoner run wild. He opens the door, and swears loudly when he trips over a heap of fabric in the doorway.

Sora makes a surprised, frightened noise, and Axel just kicks the heap of fabric away, ignoring the way that it twitched and gave a rodent-like squeak. He gives a harsh tug on the cuffs, and Sora stumbles in after him, crashing into him when Axel tugs too hard. The redhead catches him with a hand on his shoulder, and steers him toward the chair in the middle of the room.

He shoves away other debris on the floor with his feet, and pushes Sora onto the chair, the boy compliant and silent.

"Just sit there for a minute," he mumbles, and when Sora sits down, Axel starts buckling the thick leather straps down.

Three on each leg, those come first. Not tight enough to cut off circulation, not loose enough to have any give. He works quickly, used to the process. He unlocks the handcuffs on Sora's wrists, and hook them back on his belt. Then he moves onto the straps on his arms, three on each, and then the straps across his torso, three more.

It seems almost overkill, when Sora's a tiny little thing, compared to Axel at least, and weakened enough to not be any threat. But he knows that the straps are also for Sora's safety. Knows because he's seen what happens when they don't use them, has seen patients destroy themselves with thrashing and fighting, and knows it's better to use them, be careful.

He moves up to Sora's head, and the strap that goes over his forehead, buckles it down and moves to the bars that go on either side of his head, to keep him from looking to the side. The last one is one over his neck, and he buckles it up, then steps back.

"Looks like you're good to go, kid," he says cheerfully, and turns away from the chair to gather up the bundle of fabric he'd tripped over when he first came in the room. It squeaks, and he grimaces when it squirms. There's a garbage chute in the wall, and he throws the heap down it, listens to the sound of claws scrabbling on the walls.

"Ugh, did they not clean up last time?" he mumbles, and starts sorting through various vials and used medical things on the counters. He throws most down the trash chute, and gathers up the glass beakers. It's mindless work, and he starts whistling a tune as he dumps the beakers into a box which goes into a hole in the wall, automatic elevator which takes them to the industrial dishwasher that's used to clean them all.

"This place is a mess, a total mess!" he declares loudly, and starts scrubbing at the counter vigorously a wad of steel wool. "We need janitors. We really need janitors because I am not a janitor, no, definitely not," he rambles, mostly to fill the choking silence.

Axel tosses the steel wool down the garbage chute, and glances up at the clock, frowning. "Where is he? He's late," he says, and turns to Sora, as if the boy would know the answer.

Sora doesn't show any sign of having heard, just stares blindly at the ceiling.

"I'm not late, dear boy," Hojo says from the doorway.

Axel jumps, literally jumps, and whirls around to see the smirking doctor-scientist-freak standing in the door. "Well, no, I guess you're not late since you're here now," Axel says quickly, and back-pedals a few steps, away from the man.

He nods, and walks in, placing a folder onto the now-clean counter. "Have you prepped project A properly?" he asks, and opens the fridge, pulling out a vial of something green and glowing. All business, and creepy he may be, but he was certainly efficient.

Axel freezes when Hojo turns a flat stare on him, and says, "Yes, well, sort of, almost? Kind of? I strapped him down but I haven't administered the sedatives yet, since I needed to know what dose to give him for this session."

Hojo pauses, and consults the folder, one finger tapping a scribbled paragraph of writing. "That will be suitable," he says dismissively, and pulls out a plastic bag filled with sanitized instruments. He pulls out a syringe and a scalpel, laying them both on the counter before pulling a green medical-mask out of the dispenser by the door.

"So, uh, what dose of sedatives?" Axel asks, licks his lips nervously, and starts fumbling with different bottles of drugs just to have something to do.

Hojo smiles, and ties on the mask, then pulls on plastic gloves with a snap.

"None today, dear boy." He takes the syringe, and inserts the needle into the bottle of green liquid, carefully measures out thirty-millilitres.

"What?" Axel says, and drops the bottle of drugs, doesn't come back to himself fast enough to catch it, and it shatters on the ground, filling the air with a sharp bite of chemical.

Hojo casts him a glare. "Clean that up. And put away all of those bottles before you break something else. We won't be needing any of them today."

Axel leaps into action, grabs the broom and dustpan from the corner, and sweeps up the glass shards quickly, before Hojo could say anything. He crouches down, holding the dustpan filled with glass shards, and glances toward Sora, who's staring at him with wide, frightened eyes.

He looks away, and swallows, dumping the glass down the chute. "Is that all you need from me then?" he asks carefully, staring intently at Hojo so not look at Sora.

Hojo doesn't look up from searching through the bag of sanitized instruments, just waves a hand in dismissal. "That's all."

Axel hurries to the door, and stumbles back when it opens, almost pushing him to the ground. A tall figure steps through, cutting a much more imposing image than Hojo. Not wearing a lab coat, just a long, black coat. He looks over at Axel, and the blank, mildly disgusted look makes Axel feel like an ugly,defenceless bug.

Hojo makes a pleased noise, says, "Ansem, just in time. I was just about to start."

Ansem looks away from Axel, and it's like a weight has lifted, he's able to breathe again. The man lifts a hand, gesturing to the door, and Axel darts past him, out the door. He looks back, to see Ansem's face, proud, with an aura of superiority as he closes the door in Axel's face.

The door locks from the inside, and he hurries away, almost running.

Just before he turns the corner, he hears Sora start to scream.


End file.
